Game Description:The newest chapter of the iconic fight franchise marks a triumphant return to the series’ mature presentation and a reinvention of its classic 2D fighting mechanic. Driven by an all new graphics engine, the fan favourite Fatality is back and presented in more gory detail than ever before. In addition, Mortal Kombat introduces a number of new game-play features including tag team and the deepest story mode of any fighting game. Players can choose from an extensive line up of the game’s iconic warriors and challenge their friends in traditional 1 vs. 1 matches, or take on several new game modes.

Mortal Kombat Review

The Mortal Kombat franchise has arguably been on the ropes since Mortal Kombat 4 in 1997, but now Ed Boon and a new studio attempt to reboot the series with a new game that returns to the original 2D-fighting style.

The Pros

Genre-leading story mode structure

Great list of characters

A massive amount of content

The Cons

Fighting engine has a few quirks

Boss fights can make you want to throw controller

Mortal Kombat Review:

When I was growing up, Mortal Kombat was a mainstay in my gaming rotation. The original MK was shocking and had my friends and I out to the arcades constantly. I bought magazine after magazine during the lead-up to Mortal Kombat II’s release and put hundreds of hours into the SNES home version. I rocked Mortal Kombat III and its Ultimate follow-up and all things looked good in the world of MK. I even played Mortal Kombat Trilogy on my PlayStation for the pure fan-service, but then Mortal Kombat 4 happened and I immediately left for greener pastures. I haven’t enjoyed an MK game since.

My friends, I come bearing good news: Mortal Kombat is back. The engine, despite having some quirks I’ll discuss in a bit, is extremely solid and offers a decent sandbox for impressive combos and juggles. The story is a re-telling of the first three MK games and is actually engrossing, impressive, and unique. Oh, and for clarity, I’ll be referring to the new game as MK9 throughout the rest of the review.

The story isn’t exactly Shakespeare…

Now, you may not care for the story of Mortal Kombat and it can definitely take itself a bit too seriously at certain points. It’s a great, nostalgic story to enjoy with your brain set to low, but it is the format and flow of the actual campaign mode that is such an accomplishment for the genre. As I mentioned before, MK9 is a re-telling of the first three games with some new plot details and story hooks thrown in to tie them all together since you won’t be waiting years between each game.

A lot of the details are left unsaid or rely on you already being familiar with the universe, but you’ll pick-up on enough of the who’s and why’s as you go if you’ve never played an MK game. The campaign is broken up into chapters in which you’ll play a single character as the story and tournaments progress around you. From there, you’ll move from cutscene to fight to cutscene to fight in an amazing flow that really keeps you engaged. Each scene forwards the plot and sets up the next fight and there are no load screens to slow this down before each fight.

Some of the fights are a bit goofy as allies decide to fight each other at certain points -- Johnny Cage is especially good at antagonizing his friends -- but others feel well-placed and meaningful. It’s not going to match story-first games in other genres for plot quality, but the mode really accomplishes what I’ve always wanted from a fighting game’s story: each fight feels like it has weight within the world and doesn’t just pit the player up against 8 random enemies before moving on to the bosses.

My only gripe with this mode is that the bosses can get extremely difficult due to their strength and limited invulnerability during some of their attacks. Those matches aren’t unwinnable, but they definitely represent some major difficulty spikes. Oh, and you won’t perform a single fatality in this mode since it would basically kill off characters that are supposed to return.

Besides the story mode, you’ll get the old-school ladder which puts you up against that series of random enemies before throwing the bosses at you. There’s also tag mode, which let’s each player pick two characters and freely switch between characters and use them as assists. It’s an interesting mode, but it’s definitely not the strength of the game as the tag combos and assists are quite awkward to pull-off.

There’s also the Challenge Tower which has a ridiculous amount of themed challenges for characters and tag-teams along with some mini-games thrown in for good measure. Almost every action in the game will grant you coins, which can be used to unlock things like additional fatalities, alternate costumes, concept art, and more. This is all done through the Krypt, which is a “location” that you travel through to purchase unlocks from gravestones and other grim features. It has personality, but could have been better served with a simple menu-system given the sheer amount of content to be purchased.

The character list is quite large and even though there are a lot of characters that originated as palette swaps – male ninjas, female ninjas, and cyber ninjas, oh my! – they are diversified well here. They may still look very similar, but they play differently enough to full like fully realized characters.

The fatalities return in all their glory and most of them are creative and enjoyable. Some, however, are underwhelming and X-Ray moves become much more common. Still, it’s a great exclamation point on the end of a nice victory.

Scorpion’s Spear is still Back-Back-Punch

The actual fighting engine is probably the best to date in an MK game, but it does have some quirks. There are no diagonal inputs in any of the special moves, which means that playing with an analog stick or arcade stick might result in a fair amount of accidental special moves since the input window on special moves is really long. It seems like the slower you play, the cleaner your execution will be.

The game’s combo system relies heavily on juggles, though you’ll also find success with some quick button-sequence combos. Mixing in special moves is a bit more difficult than I would like, but I attribute a lot of this to the above input issue and the lack of publicly available combo lists.

The super meter, which is used for the new X-Ray moves, powered-up specials, and combo breakers, adds some more depth to the game, especially since it persists between rounds. With one section full, you can do a powered up special which usually adds extra hits or helps with combos. With two, you can do two specials or perform a combo breaker to stop an opponent’s series of attacks. When it is full, you can unleash an X-Ray move which will do a ton of damage if it hits and leave you questioning how your opponent can continue to fight with stabbed eyes or broken legs. It’s best not to question it, but the moves do offer a bit of a comeback mechanic for players.

I do wish they were a bit harder to pull-off since their damage output is extremely high for a simple two-button press. In other fighting games, moves that do upwards of 30% damage have complex inputs for balance purposes. When your foe has a full X-Ray meter, do yourself a favor and block.

At the time of my review, all of the multiplayer features were not online yet, so check back after release for an update on the online features.

MOOOOOORTAL KOMBAAAAAAAT!! *Techno Music*

This is definitely the return of Mortal Kombat and it’s easily the best all-around game in the franchise. It’s got more depth than its predecessors, a ton of things to do and unlock, and a surprising genre-leading story mode. There are definitely a few minor gripes, but it’s nothing to stop you from going out and snagging MK9 if you’re a longtime fan or if you’ve just been looking for an alternative to the other fighting games out today.

Comments are Closed

Anyone ever wondered why G4tv.com ALWAYS uses X-Box box art for games that were predominantly Sony console games as soon as they go multi-platfrom?!? It seems they use the X-box box art for EVERY multi-plat game actually... In theory, I'd bet if a title as iconic as the Mario series went multi-platform G4 would then just be ridiculous to use the x-box label for display instead of nintendo's label!

Mortal Kombat 4 wasn't any good? Mortal Kombat on the ropes since 1997? The reviewer has been drinking too much. But then he sobered up and gave the current Mortal Kombat a five out of five. The return to the 2d format and hardcore fatalities make Mortal Kombat the best in the series to date. A few more new fighters would have been nice. This game plays smoothly and the art direction was spot on.

I had no desire to buy this game..but after a 5/5 review...what the heck...I picked it up. I love it! Very challenging!

But I never feel like throwing the controller. Sure there are a few unfair fights with being out numbered and bosses you can't grab. But I always feel that there is a chance for victory. The losses don't feel so cheap like in many games. I don't feel like the game is cheating like many other fighting games make me feel.

It has been a blast to play and the fatalities are awesome!

One complaint: I know it's tradition in past MK games, but on a PS3 in the year 2011....we can't give each character more that 2 fatalities? I felt the moves for each character could have been a bit deeper with only 5 or 6 special moves each. But..it's an MK game..."deep" has never been the crux of the franchise.

By far the best Mortal Kombat game ever and MKII holds a big place in my heart hell it took up most of my childhood but this game is just amazing i picked up the tournament edition and the fight stick is insane and very well built my only complaint about the game is its laggy online play i even went straight Ethernet and it still was laggy

@kazin_ns- It is still the classic dial a combo system. Which for the fans who remember how to play the original series, will make for a really easy learning curve. I picked up the controller and I was up to 7 and 8 hit combos after only a few runs at Ladder mode.

Can someone tell me how the combo system works? Are the predetermined button presses that were introduced in MK3 still in? (People called it dial-a-combo back in the day) Or does it play more like Street Fighter now?

The thing about the boss battles is true. I found myself having to resort to cheap, boring tactics to win battles against Shao Khan, when I should have had to really show off my skills. I agree that the boss fights need to be challenging to give you that sense of accomplishment, but I always feel kind of dirty when I finally get past him. Hopefully that can be addressed in the inevitable sequel.

Other than that, this game has been a blast. If you have both a PS3 and an XBox, get the PS3 version. Not only do you get Kratos (who completely fits into the game setting. Not like extra characters put in to some OTHER fighting games *cough* Soul Caliber *cough*), but the Playstation controller is much better suited to the fighting genre.